The Journey to Byzantium

You probably arrived at this site because you typed in “Sailing to Byzantium.” You want to know the lyrics to a song or you’ve read W.B. Yeats poem, or were required to read it, and want to know what it means. What does the poem say? What’s it about?

You can go here, and read an explication of the poem. It is really about an experience we all go through. It was Yeats description of his journey into old age—his emotional and intellectual passage from youthful vigor to the limitations of aging.

I think he has done an admiral job creating a metaphor that speaks to the experience of passing through life. From the fully engaged role of youth to the marginalization of decrepitude. I don’t think that younger people can relate to what he is saying. They cannot connect emotionally with his imagery and symbolism. I know I would not have been able to until I began to experience the process myself.

If one chooses to examine the past and one’s experiences, I think it leads to maudlin sentimentality, regrets, and revisionist interpretations of one’s history. It is kind of a trap; if you obsess about the past, it invariable leads to emotionalism; if you avoid reflections of things past, you feel that you are living in the now, but the now has no meaning except as it is experienced within the context of one’s cumulative experiences.

The emotions attached to the past are usually bittersweet. To deny the feelings grounded in past experiences, leads to a sterile “nowness.” What value does your life have denied its residence within a personal history-- the crucible of pain, regret, love, hope, excitement, joy, ecstasy, and sorrow--the broad range of feelings chaotically intermingled in the curious chronology of our cerebral logic.

In a biological sense, one’s emotions equip one to survive on this planet. Fear and reward both guard us against harmful things and encourage behavior that enhances our opportunity for survival. Then fear and attraction become shaped through language pairing to become attached to ideas and images. A painting or song can elicit complex feelings, but they are still derivations of primal elicitants.

I’m not sure what happens to those who become turned off to life—those who lose their curiosity and wonderment—the mystique, the esoterica of our inexplicable existence is apparently replaced by resigned anesthetization. For some, intellectual endowment limits their ability to abstract and reason; for others, parental conditioning and societal imperatives induce a somnolent acceptance of the given—the spiritual bureaucracy and common beliefs of the bourgeoisie fulfill their need to know. Metaphysical curiosity is replaced by the words of the prophets.

When I was a teenager, I remember a time that a friend and I lay on the hood of my car looking up at the stars. It was Florida in the late 50s, and the sky was remarkably clear. I felt like the stars and I were one with each other; I could not distinguish myself from a reciprocal coexistence with something dark and eternal and wondrous and mystical and frightening and exciting.

Within this moment of turbulent spirituality, there was a terrible joy—an intense compression of emotions and sensations that hyperbolized my sense of “being.” Although I do not experience that intensity now when I look at the stars, the wonderment is still there. I don’t know any of the answers to the important questions elicited by my gazing.

I will die without knowing where the universe came from, and how its substances and dynamics have created a consciousness that allows it to know itself—through my being. But, the search for understanding is still worth the effort.

Sailing to Byzantium is Yeats metaphor for experiencing the realities of his personal journey into old age. Yeats created his own mythology—his personal set of symbols and images that explained existence and conscious experience. Instead of adopting a traditional religious explanation for existence, his spiritual life was a mixed synergy of the cabalistic, occult, and esoteric.

Sailing to Byzantium represents personal spiritual freedom and the joy and mystery of the inexplicable. Unfortunately, many people do not require spiritual democracy. The prefer affiliation, and once committed unfortunately begin to guard their beliefs against incursions from reason or disagreement. There is a hierarchy, a caste system—both spoken and covert—that organizes the value of people in accord with the answers they have found to life’s profound questions.

This week in Saudi Arabia a Wahhabi cleric Sheihk Abdurrahman al-Baraak ordered two journalists for an Al-Riyadh newspaper to be put to death for suggesting that Christian and Jews might not be “unbelievers.” Although the Muslim religion is particularly hateful towards those who believe differently, ultra-conservative Christian sects have expressed equivalent animosities toward “non-believers.”

People who are members of traditional religious institutions may find it difficult to experience Yeats journey. It is not marked and mapped like the beliefs of a formal religion—it is imaginary and symbolized through his highly personal intellectual-emotional experiences.

It seems that I am learning something everyday—something about myself. Perhaps I am evolving in accord with Yeat’s journey, but toward my own destination. I now feel happy for anyone who has achieved spiritual peace, irrespective of the particulars of their beliefs. I have decided that my own journey is not encumbered by their success, nor impeded by it. Unless, they seek to map my journey after their own, we can all share a common love for what has brought us here.